7 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses (Compared)

Are you comparing the best CRM software for small businesses? CRM software helps you manage customer relationships, increase sales, manage leads, and grow your business. Due to the critical role Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software plays in your business success, it’s extremely important that you properly research the industry and compare the top CRM providers before making your decision. In this article, we will show you our expert pick of the best CRM software for small businesses. We will compare popular CRM software in terms of features and share the pros and cons to help you choose the best platform. What is a…

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Are you comparing the best CRM software for small businesses? CRM software helps you manage customer relationships, increase sales, manage leads, and grow your business.

Due to the critical role Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software plays in your business success, it’s extremely important that you properly research the industry and compare the top CRM providers before making your decision.

In this article, we will show you our expert pick of the best CRM software for small businesses. We will compare popular CRM software in terms of features and share the pros and cons to help you choose the best platform.

What is a CRM Software?

Most businesses need a contact manager to handle contact details of their customers and prospects. In the early stages of most companies, this is typically done manually through spreadsheets or simple contact management tools.

However, these processes become inefficient as your business grows, and if you don’t fix the problem fast enough, then it can lead to significant loss in opportunity / sales.

A CRM software helps solve the problem by storing all aspects of customer relationship into a database and making it easily accessible. It allows your marketing, sales, and customer support teams to have all the data at their fingertips when needed.

What to Look for in Your CRM Software?

Since there are so many different CRM software companies out there, it becomes quite overwhelming for small businesses to decide which one is the best CRM for their needs.

Here are some quick tips on choosing the best CRM software for your business:

1. Ease of Use – A recent survey revealed that 67% of businesses put ease of use as the most important feature of their CRM software. You and your team will be using it for several hours every day. If the CRM is not easy to use, then it will not you help achieve your business goals.

2. Cloud and Mobile – In 2008, less than 12% of CRM software ran on the cloud. Today, 87% of CRMs are cloud-based software. It is more secure, faster, and easy to integrate with other apps and services.

Another study by the Nucleus Research revealed that 65% of companies using a mobile-friendly CRM, exceeded their sales targets. This means you want to look for a CRM software that is mobile-friendly.

This makes it convenient for your teams to meet their targets. Your customers get quicker responses and don’t have to wait for hours just to get quick answers.

3. Make a Features List – You need to make a list of features that you need in your CRM software. Don’t worry if you can’t think of all the features right away. This exercise will give you an idea of what would be a good fit for your business.

CRM software are not just an address book of your customers’ contact information. They are useful because they integrate into your marketing, sales, and lead generation.

They help you manage every aspect of a customer’s journey with your business with great detail. You would need to see how you can integrate the specific CRM software with your existing business process and sales activities.

4. Integrations – Many modern CRM software include a ton of features. However, you would still need to get them to work with other apps, like your WordPress site, lead generation software, email marketing service, business email service, social media platforms, and more. Make sure that your CRM software supports those integrations.

For example, if you are running a membership website or online store, then you would need your CRM to integrate with your membership plugin or eCommerce platform.

These are just some very basic requirements that you would want to check. You may also want to consider pricing, the ability to add users and departments, security, GDPR compliance, and more.

That being said, let’s take a look at the top CRM software on the market and how they stack up on these criteria.

HubSpot is the best CRM software for small businesses looking for a cost-effective solution to get started. It offers free plans for their CRM, Marketing, Sales, and Sevice hubs.

The free HubSpot CRM comes with unlimited users and unlimited contacts. It is also free forever.

However, many of the features are limited or unavailable in the free plan. To access the powerful features, you will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans under the Growth Suite.

HubSpot is quite easy to use, and you can connect marketing, sales, and service hubs to your CRM software. This provides you a wide range of tools to efficiently manage the customer journey.

With an easy user interface, you get a bird’s eye view of your entire sales pipeline on your dashboard. You can view detailed reports, all contact activity, sales activities, and user/team performance.

HubSpot offers a comprehensive set of features including a mobile app for iPhone and Android, contact manager, email templates, real-time notifications, phone calls, email tracking, scheduling, and more.

Integrations are crucial for CRM software. HubSpot integrates with more than 300 apps and services including WordPress, top email marketing companies, lead generation software like OptinMonster, and many more.

Pricing: HubSpot offers core CRM platform for free. For more features, you can upgrade to their paid plans for Marketing, Sales, and Services hubs or upgrade to Growth Suite, which starts from $113 / month and includes 1 user ($38 per month for each additional user).

Constant Contact is a popular email marketing and CRM software. It allows you to easily store contacts, manage customer information, send emails, and track customer activity from your dashboard.

It is extremely easy to use with simple reports, detailed activity logs for each contact, and powerful drag and drop tools to send out emails. You can schedule emails, create sales funnels, and have easy marketing automation for beginners.

Constant Contact has a huge marketplace of integrations available for third-party apps. Many of the popular services and tools that you are already using like WPForms can be instantly connected to Constant Contact.

For eCommerce stores, Constant Contact offers integrations with all top eCommerce platforms. It includes eCommerce tools which help you capture, engage, and convert leads into paying customers.

Pricing: Their pricing is based on the number of contacts and starts from $20 per month. However, if you want to add team members then you will need their Plus plan which starts at $45 per month.

PipeDrive is a sales driven CRM software for businesses. It offers a complete sales pipeline management with an intuitive user interface that gives you quick access to all the information you need.

Designed for sales teams, it includes features like sales reporting, sales forecasting, detailed activity log, advanced contact details, email integrations, and customizable pipelines.

It has a growing selection of integration apps allowing you to connect your CRM system to other services you already use. It also has mobile apps for iOS and Android allowing you to stay connected and get things done.

Pricing: Their plans start from $12.50 per user per month billed annually.

Freshsales is another popular CRM software suitable for businesses of all sizes. It features a sales-oriented approach with tools to maximize your conversions.

They offer a one-stop dashboard that gives you instant access to reports, activities, phone calls, emails, users, and contact management. It has an intuitive web based interface and has powerful mobile apps to help your teams make sales on the go.

Freshsales uses AI-powered lead scoring which helps you prioritize leads more likely to convert. Other notable features include visual sales pipelines, actionable insights into conversations, event tracking, custom workflows, and more.

It has native integrations available for some of the most popular third-party services. Several more integrations are available as third-party apps. However, the number of integrations is a bit limited at the moment.

Drip comes with native integrations for all top third-party services. This includes email services, lead generation software, SMS services, WooCommerce, Shopify, and many more. It offers workflows to generate leads from Facebook and Instagram which helps you get tapped into their massive user base.

Streak is a CRM software for Gmail and works with both free Gmail accounts as well as G Suite. It allows you to track customer emails in Gmail, manage contacts, track leads, and manage sales pipelines.

It automatically captures leads from your contacts, allows you to add tasks and reminders, add tags and notes, create custom pipelines, schedule emails, and so much more.

It comes as a browser add-on as well as mobile app for Android and iOS. It supports third-party integrations through Gmail and Zapier, this gives you access to share data across multiple tools and services.

Pricing: They offer a limited free plan for personal use. Their paid plans start from $49 per user per month billed annually.

AgileCRM is a powerful all-in-one CRM software. It packs contact management, sales, marketing and customer service in one convenient dashboard.

It offers sales tools with 360 degree contact view, detailed reports, timeline, calendar, events, project management, deals, and gamification for your sales team. You get access to quick reports that you can drill down to keep track of everything that is happening across your business.

Pricing: AgileCRM offers a limited free plan. Their paid plans start from $9.99 per user per month billed annually or $8.99 per user billed for 2-years.

Which is the Best CRM Software for Small Business?

As we mentioned earlier that you’ll have to compare CRM tools based on your businesses requirements and goals.

Based on the criteria we defined earlier, we believe that HubSpot is the best CRM software for small businesses. It is easy to use and offers a comprehensive set of features. They offer a free plan which is good enough for small businesses to get started.

If email is the primary source of leads and sales for your business, then Constant Contact is the best option. It offers an easy to use contact management tool that you can effectively use to boost sales and manage customer relations. Their pricing is very friendly for small businesses.

If you’re looking for a completely sales focused CRM, then we recommend using either PipeDrive or FreshSales because they’re both sales-driven CRM, and they will help you improve your sales processes.

If you’re an eCommerce brand, and you need a CRM that comes with eCommerce focused marketing automation, then look no further than Drip. It is extremely powerful and worth every single penny because it’ll definitely help you grow your overall sales.